


Whatever it takes

by FrozenBrownie



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers Endgame fix-it, Canon Divergence, Heavy angst with happy ending, Hurt Loki (Marvel), Hurt/Comfort, Intersex Loki (Marvel), Loki lives (bitch), M/M, Marriage Proposal, Natasha Lives, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), character growth in Thor because he's not dumb, happy end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:53:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28983684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrozenBrownie/pseuds/FrozenBrownie
Summary: After Thanos ripped not only the entire universe in half, but Loki from Thor's grasp too, the grief of a god threatens to become their collective undoing. But then, Loki always has another trick up his sleeve or three, and when Odin's ravens come to Thor at his darkest moment, new hope gives wings to the battered rest of the Avengers. In the wake of Thor's rage, his love, his devotion for an ever-changing soul, there comes a chance to heal, and so they might just save the universe.
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 128





	Whatever it takes

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, internet!  
> This was written back in May last year, whatever the fuck time is these days, and I finally edited this to dump a whole lot of angst and comfort on your screens. Add a pile of salt about the MCU's ending on top (I shall not mention the sacrilege's name), stir in some intersex Loki and gods in love, and you have this. Have fun, enjoy. Stay safe, everyone!

The universe was crying. This planet was heaving and shuddering with grief, this one and billions upon billions of other inhabited planets. Thor, sitting in a quiet pristine room of glass, could hear the mortals of this world. Could not help but hear them. His fingers were motionless in front of his mouth while he stared straight ahead without seeing a thing. The bench he sat on was uncomfortably hard. He barely noticed it. There, a flicker: an illusion? Gone when he turned his head.   
The thought struck him like lightning, a sharp bolt, there and gone within a heartbeat, leaving behind a mark among a thousand others. His eyes were blazing white, he knew, because he felt the electricity embracing him like a lover’s touch, a shield and a promise all the like.   
It was better this way. The mortals had told him to ‘cool down for a minute’, to take his time and come out whenever he wanted to. He would have rather not ventured beyond the glass chamber again in all eternity.   
  
Though he sat deep inside the facility that the last of the Avengers called their new home reluctantly if at all, Thor knew that it was raining heavily outside. Summer was kissing nature farewell to make room for Fall, to let this half of the planet slip into a slumber until some time between Winter Solstice and Whitsun. Fat splashes of water beat against the grand building, thunder rolled in the distance in an unsteady rhythm. This was all that Thor was able to do just now: keep the worst of the storm away from the battered inhabitants of Washington, as they called the last resort of Asgard’s survivors.   
  
Every breath he took willingly, every blink, every heartbeat was a testament to his failings. Loki’s ghost might as well have sat beside him, mocking him with silence, but he certainly were to come apart completely, Thor thought, if he would have had to fight a _draugr_ with the face of his soulmate. Could the dead turn into those vengeful monsters out in deep space? Was there a place for un-beings in zero gravity, in the vacuum?   
Thor inhaled so deeply that his lungs hurt to keep himself from surveying the empty room for shadows. He had no strength for paranoia just yet. Either Loki had already moved on to Valhalla despite the lack of a burial, or he was still out there, lost.   
  
Another growl of the clouds rolled over the drenched facility. Maybe walking into the rain again would help him, Thor thought. Screaming at the sky, begging the Norns to relieve him of his existence or to lead him back onto his rightful path. But then, he had done that already. This was why he was sitting in here, unmoving. He had wandered astray a long time ago, blind, deaf, a fool, young and boastful, unworthy. Nothing more than a golden bull. No wonder that Hela had shattered Mjolnir like a crystal cup.  
  
He pretended not to hear the light double steps in the hallway. Nobody came within his sight and he did not move his eyes, still too concentrated on keeping the thunderstorm outside at bay. Only one creature in the entire universe deserved his wrath, and the Titan surely had taken up lodgings on some peaceful planet far away from Midgard by now, easy to grow crops on, easier to harvest.   
“There he is. Not to step on your toes or anything, but you should be careful with him. He has been like this since Steve talked him down earlier. The whole compound is running on Tony’s arc reactor technology right now because he fried the energy grid, but it would have come to that in a couple days anyway.” A shaky exhale betrayed the shrug audible on the last heavily accented words, spoken subdued, quietly. They were of a language close to Old Norse; the mother tongue of the Aesir; similar enough to be understood easily. Female. “If you need anything, just ask. We’ll do what we can.”  
“Of course. Thank you, Natasha, you and your friends really aren’t half bad. Thor has a point in speaking so highly of you. I’ll talk to him, but it could be a while yet. His father fell asleep for a year every few centuries, his mother went on pilgrimage like clockwork to Yggdrasil’s crown where the Norns live and spin out our lives to meditate. Maybe this is his way of shutting down.”  
  
Finally, Thor stirred, moving the little finger of his left hand in protest because he had never succumbed to the Odinsleep before, neither was his seiðr so intricately interwoven with the fabric of the universe like Frigga’s that he needed solitude to recover after a while. The memory struck a chord deep inside of his heart. Had Loki not withdrawn to the library time and time again, not for training because their mother – because Frigga would have chastised him thoroughly for endangering the books, and not for pleasure either because he only read fiction in his own rooms?   
  
The hard cushion of the bench dipped to Thor’s right. With his brows drawn, he turned his head to look at the Valkyrie without correcting his stance.   
“Oh, he’s awake, now look at that,” she rejoiced in her ever-present sarcastic undertones while Natasha’s featherlight steps went down the corridor. It was too bright in here.   
“I cannot make the rain stop. In time I fear that I will drown their lands entirely.” It was out of etiquette, doubtlessly, to speak without greeting and the elaborate ways of his tongue seemed to have escaped him. He felt so drained, like he was still being crushed under Thanos’ pranks, his own skull small like a babe’s in the clutches of this violet-skinned monstrosity.   
  
Something he wasn’t aware of must have shifted. The Valkyrie relaxed slightly and clapped him on the shoulder.   
“You just need to sleep. But it’s better to have an outlet than to bottle it up and drink yourself stupid for a millennium, believe me.” Her joke fell flat, Thor could not think of a single appropriate response to that. She clearly hesitated to speak up again when he stayed silent. Thunder was still pounding behind his temples, a cacophony of noise inside his mind along with the pleas of the mortals who prayed to him to ease their agony. His very bones strained with the effort to hold it all in.   
  
“Sleep will evade me, would I lay my head to rest. No, I need air.” Thor stood, stretching on sore legs. He felt ancient. Weary as his late father, isolated like his mother in her last days. How he longed for Loki’s soothing touch, his clever silvertongue that always asked the right questions, his ability to see clearly in times of desperation…   
“Wonderful idea, let’s make the rain stop,” the Valkyrie hurried to comment in catching up with him as Thor was already out the door. Every movement felt like boulders being pushed over plains, his mind, begging to fall into unconsciousness, clashed with his muscles taking a step for a step for a step until he stood in front of the large building on a lawn. The grass reached into the distance where a wide, bottle-green river cut the edges of a forest so thick that one could easily get lost in it for sure. He got drenched within seconds, the rain battered his skull, his skin, the thin leather armor he was still wearing. When his stumbling feet could no longer carry him, even though he desperately wished to wander into the wilderness of that forest and simply disappear, a thunderclap marked the buckling of his knees.   
  
Norns, and here he was, thinking he had screamed it all out hours before. The Valkyrie came to a halt next to him, a hesitant hand settled on his shoulder as if to keep him from falling face first into the mud, without pressure, but firm, knowing exactly what he was going through.   
“Heavy is the head that bears the crown,” she said much gentler than her usual snark and tapped his shoulder. “You have to get up, your Majesty. I know it sucks a mighty lot, but your people need their king.”  
  
There was a relatively small space ship sitting next to the Guardian’s _Benatar_ , wet and gleaming on the pavement in front of the large hall that held a number of Midgardian high technology vehicles. It was a Necrocraft, a small circular Sakaaran jet with its diagonally upturned wings proud and its lid down, and if that alone hadn’t been enough to tear open Thor’s veins and _take the universe apart_ until he had Thanos’ bleeding head to throw it down into Helheim, two three-eyed ravens were sitting on it. One on either side, the left one white as snow, the right one black as coal.   
  
Thor came to his feet so fast that the curtain of rain swam before his eyes.   
“Wha-…”  
“Your Majesty! Oh, for- Thor, you idiot!”  
The ravens cawed, shaking off the rain before they spread their wings to sweep down onto Thor’s shoulders, one on each. To conceal his joy was a thing of impossibility. Thor let them nip his fingers and press their soft feather heads to his cheeks, both were so very warm in spite of the downpour. Maybe he was crying. Slowly, the thunder grew more distant, farther away with every breathless gulp of air that he sucked in like a drowning man.   
  
“Huginn and Muninn, oh, has Father sent you from Valhalla? Have you come to hasten me tither?” Huginn cawed, an ugly, intimidating sound for anyone who did not grow up with Odin’s messenger ravens flying in and out of Asgard daily. Muninn ruffled his short hair by fluttering one of his wings as if he was searching for Thor’s crown, or maybe he was mourning Thor’s hair as much as he himself did. Both their third eyes never blinked, their claws were much sharper than a normal raven’s feet and they had no regard for atmospheres, deep space or predators. They were a comforting weight, something familiar, and their appearance surely no coincidence. Muninn dropped something smooth made of metal into his hand, reflex caught it, instinct held it up the right way.   
  
Huginn and Muninn must have felt the shudder that coiled through his entire body, because they took flight cawing, cawing, cawing, until he came to his feet too. He was distantly aware that he had spectators, some Aesir grouped around none other than Tony Stark, held upright by Doctor Bruce Banner, pale, half his former size. All of them watched him apprehensively, as if they were parts scared, parts hopeful of his deeds. Only Brunnhilde dared to approach him slowly.   
“Loki is alive,” Thor announced with such deep-rooted fervor that a manic laugh broke free from his throat. And then again, in English: “Loki is alive!” What came out sounded more like a sob choked by relief, even though he could not in any reasonable mind be sure, but he knew, oh, now he knew. They were polar opposites and yet one, like the cycle of the year, a constancy, two beating hearts out of rhythm when apart.   
  
“How?” Brunnhilde simply asked, the same question that flitted through his mind like a bird without fixating on anything. He pinned her down with a stare, something that felt like a bonfire ripped through his breast where a minute before only numb grief had suffocated him. The brooch he was holding was wet already, so while he finally took the first deep breath that did not taste of ashes, he willed the rain away. Slowly, slowly, so as not to startle the abounding life of Midgard. Back on his shoulders settled Huginn and Muninn with ruffled feathers, making a show of shaking off the water directly into his hair.   
“Were I blind and silenced, deaf and numb, I would still recognize every thing that he holds dear. This is one of his favorite brooches to wear at court, a replica of Níðhöggr, one of the many ways he rebelled in, even though it is easy to overlook. And he certainly did not wear it at the time I saw him fall from the Titan’s grip.” With shaking fingers, he turned it over and over for an inscription, but it was pristine, made of a single layer of emerald, the eye was a tiny diamond.   
  
The valkyrie’s facial expression underwent a rapid change of disbelief, recognition, finally exasperation and amusement to end on a hard-set seriousness that betrayed her young features. She was double his senior.   
“Níð. Right, that bastard. Loss of honor, the status of a villain, the snake seeks to destabilize the universe. That is sarcasm packed into a _brooch_. I’m impressed.”   
Dripping wet and quaking, he made his way over to the facility once more where the rest of his people parted for him like the sea. He was no larger than most of the men, just bulkier, but only because no smith had made it into the life-boats before Thanos’ attack on the _Statesman_. With his shorn hair and the determination on his face, born from a rekindled rage that fed freshly off the piece of jewelry digging into his right palm, soaked to the bone in a leather harness and a Midgardian pair of jeans, he must have appeared like he had finally lost his mind. No more handsome than most of the Aesir, they were gods, after all, each and every single one of them. And yet, they stepped aside like they had for Odin, forming a path to the entrance of the lobby where gradually all of the Avengers regrouped, suspicious, arms crossed, brows drawn.   
  
“Stark!” Thor barked, though he took pity on the man when he saw how brittle he looked. Malnourished, grey in the face, way too close to death for a mortal his age. “Anthony Starkson, it is a marvel to have you back with us. Is this your ship over there?” Embracing the man rather felt like cradling a skeleton, but despite all his surprised sputtering and instant chatter, he patted Thor on the back while Huginn and Muninn took an interest to Bruce’ resigned efforts to usher them inside.   
“That fish bowl? Naah, that’s hers.” Stark pointed to a bald, blue-skinned woman behind him that did not seem biological in construct at all. She was clearly weary, her gaze narrowed and her stance defensive.   
Thor approached her with his hands held at the level of his heart to show peacefulness. Somehow he feared she would attack him at any given second, but not out of animosity; she watched him as if she was afraid of him.   
  
“What do you want with my ship?”  
“Revenge,” he answered without hesitance. Not a thing changed in her grim expression.   
“Then you are another king crushed by my father. I expect you to hold him down while I put a dagger in his heart.” Her voice sounded mechanic, off as if badly calibrated, still she obviously was not a robot as her left shoulder, blue as the rest, was flesh.   
“You are the Titan’s daughter?” Thor rasped, feeling like he was being choked. A small offspring of a giant father, looking at the world like it was out to get her.   
Not a plate in her face moved at her dismissal.   
“Adopted.”  
Had she not appeared even deadlier than Loki, blue _, so blue_ , so small, so full of rage and distrust, he would have been more aggressive. Enough mistakes had been made by taking out revenge on the culprit’s children.   
“I thank you for bringing Anthony home safely, then. My axe will separate the Titan’s head from his wretched body for you to burn or bury.” Her eyebrow clicked when she turned from him slowly to walk away, making eye contact with Stark just before she vanished inside. No curtsey, no bow, she answered to nobody.   
Norns, but he missed Loki with every fiber of his being. Shooing away the rain grew more difficult each passing minute, the clouds refused to dissolve and the winds howled like Thor’s thundering heart.  
  
“Do you have a plan, Stark?” he enquired in turning around, his fists were still curled. Sometime in between all of this, the Captain had showed up, looking just as haggard, vengeful and desperate as all of them did. But there was a weariness to his shoulders that spoke of many such farewells and separations from his loved one; Thor only had to think back to Lady Natasha’s short summary of his life story to turn away from him in pain for fear of wanting to embrace him too. If a god’s love was not enough to better the agony of this hour, maybe a god’s wrath was.   
Tony Stark, though, appeared no-where near ready for battle. And he would not be for some weeks to come.   
“A plan? Against _that_? Yeah, you could call it one. Get the glove and the stones, kill the fucking grape, reverse this bullshit before humanity extinguishes itself early.” His chin was raised and set; for all the strain that space travel had put on his unprepared body, he seemed terribly eager to venture out to the stars again. He always had been the most ambitious of the Avengers.  
  
Thor shook his head no.  
“Stormbreaker will sever his neck this time, I swear it to you. My culture relies on identifiable dead bodies so the family can avenge their fallen member, cutting off the head is seen as high treason, so long as the victim is not an outlaw. To aim for the heart thus came natural to me, and we all suffer for it now. I seek to ail this mistake.”  
“Hey, we almost had him too,” Stark shrugged but hissed at the movement, a wrong one apparently, because he touched his right-hand side briefly in pain. “Fucked it up ‘cause he killed his second daughter to get the Soul Stone. Quill freaked, now he’s dusted, along with his entire crew safe for a talking raccoon.” Briefly his gaze swept over the frighteningly thinned crowd of Aesir watching from afar, some had already turned away. Still the rain applauded their misery, gentler now, steadier. Heimdall was missing too. Dead. Not dusted.   
  
When Stark looked at him again, opening his mouth once more, Brunnhilde beat him to it.   
“We all want Thanos dead, preferably slow and painfully,” she spoke what everyone was thinking, in English this time. “But Asgard needs her king. Look around you! The mortals look like absolute shit, I _feel_ like absolute shit and you, your Majesty, are a mess.”  
“You have a bold mouth,” Thor replied tensely even though he would never chastise her for choosing her people over mortals she did not even know. At least she felt Asgardian once again, instead of denying her origin due to grief and an old pain that had festered so deeply in her soul that it had eaten her alive from the inside. She let both her arms fall to her sides loudly, shrugging.   
  
“Yes, well, sorry, I don’t bow anymore. Loki might be alive, fine, we’ve been there, done that, frankly I’m not even surprised after what you have told me. At least he sent you a note this time. But where do you want to start? For either of them? To find Loki or Thanos; to save or to kill, you can only do one at a time. And I know that you royals are shit at impulse control, but he crushed you last time. Tossed you aside into a pile of corpses, you fucking told me!” Stomping up to him like Sif sometimes had tended to do when he was being stupid; and that thought _hurt_ like mad; she looked him up and down, then Stark, followed by Colonel Rhodey, Doctor Banner, Natasha Romanoff, Captain Rogers and finally Clint Barton who looked about ready to either pounce or run. When she turned to Thor once more, her gaze was determined.   
“Listen, I hated your father from a safe distance in exile. Don’t make me hate you up close. Sit this one out, all of you idiots, and kick the Titan’s ass another time. I’ll be with you then.”  
  
“She does have a point,” Colonel Rhodey dared with a brief nod that Brunnhilde acknowledged, satisfied. His eyes darted between Stark and the rest of them, the battered, dripping wet last ones of Midgard’s mightiest heroes and what was still alive of Asgard’s former glory. Mothers, children, men and women, scared, grief-stricken, exhausted. “Man, we’re done. You can barely stand, Tones, and I’m useless. Vision’s gone, so is Wanda, Barnes, Sam, King T’Challa, Peter…”  
“Yes, thanks a lot, I didn’t need that reminder,” Stark spat and squared his jaw. “I’m not giving up. Others might, because that’s the only way to stay sane right now. But not us. If we give up, we’re done for. Earth is. The universe is. Okay? We have to try, and that’s it.”  
  
“Well spoken,” Thor praised him quietly and wanted to go on, but Tony cut him off. His hands aided his words, making it easy to imagine the man he had once been; he would get there again eventually. At some point in the far future when order was restored.   
“No, nope, wasn’t done, sorry point break. Your Valkyrie was right in one point: you’ve hit rock bottom. Two break downs in a day? Pal, I’ve been there, it’s not pretty, you need help and time. We’re bringing you the overgrown grape’s head, no strings attached. If you’re bonkers enough to try, you can go hunt for Loki afterwards.”  
  
For a second, lightning flashed across the darkening sky so brightly that a vast amount of the Aesir fled inside, their gazes downcast. Loki’s brooch dug into Thor’s skin so painfully that he feared hurting himself; there never was any good in shedding a god’s blood unbidden. Electricity zapped his exposed skin, sizzling, cracking, leaving him raw and aching. The rain grew heavier once again, without rhythm or pattern the sky was lit up purple for a series of stuttering heartbeats each. Tony Stark, though, kept his ground even under his unrelenting stare. When Thor spoke again, the English words came to him slowly, rounder, deeper than his old Norse mother tongue.   
  
“I am thunder,” he growled, “I am rain. Without me, your world would be barren, as it were farther away from your sun. Beasts of the size of mountains have fallen under my hands. You do not recognize what I am, for you are human, and I do not fault you for that. But if you think for a second that you will stand a chance against the mad Titan without me, because I am grieving, and silent, and distant, and truly sorry for all of it - you are sorely mistaken.” Stark raised both his eyebrows, feigning nonchalance.  
“So, what happens if the talking racoon and Cap two point zero takes you with us, hu? Point break goes off to break things again? That what you good at, breaking things and making it rain?”  
“Tony-“ He waved Barton aside without looking at him.   
“Shut it, Katniss, we're having a moment here.” Barton, apparently, was having none of it.   
“Like shit you do. You're pants at pep-talks and not in your right mind either. You lost a kid, okay? I get it. Fuck, my family's dead. Thor has lost his whole _people_ safe for a handful,” he carried on while gesturing at the very same. “Let him come if he wants to so badly, I'd be glad for the back-up."  
“I thank you for the trust, Bartonsson.”  
“Yeah, right, whatever..."  
  
He drew back to Lady Natasha’s side like he had exhausted all his energy for the day in defending Thor’s honor. Again, thunder rumbled above the forest that would soon be flooded by the whipping river. The rain made them all deaf to birds and bees, to the wonders of solitude while mother nature drank up the rare downpour at the end of a catastrophic week. Thor looked up to the heavens with his fists clenched.   
“As soon as we know where Thanos has crawled to for admiring his work, as soon as you are healed enough to fight, we will reverse what has been wrongfully done. He will not even know what has hit him, and I will be there to see the lights go out in the eyes of my brother’s tormentor.”  
With an air of finality that no-one dared to question aloud, he turned back to the grand entrance, where his people had sought shelter from the storm. He needed to calm down.   
  
  
They could not stay here, he realized much later while cradling a cup of coffee brewed for him by Natasha. His father had called a cliffside in northern Norway home, a bit of research told Thor why: that was where their ancestors had lived last before leaving Midgard and building Asgard. The gods were not meant to live amongst humans. That spot above the raging sea was a temporary resort at best. The humans could not stop the Aesir from settling wherever they wanted, and that was not how Thor wanted to build his legacy. Those were the ways of his late father, and he, mind you, was not his father.   
  
With each breath, the clouds grew lighter, the rain finally relented to stop altogether when Thor was half-way through his cup of coffee. In miniature movements of his fingertips, he used the old motions of his childhood training to regain control. Smoke was rising from the horizon where civilization crumbled under the devastation of losing half the population, along with half of all food and life stock. All living things, Thanos had said. That included the plants, the ants, every last miniature creature in its microcosmos. That Loki had survived the snap came close to a miracle. One half of a whole should have been erased. Were he and Loki not two souls, made of the same stardust? Were their threads not so intertwined that tearing them apart had rippled across the fabric of the entire universe?   
  
It was unnatural for brothers, he thought for the millionths time, but then, they weren’t. Not really. And Loki had fought tooth and nail lately not to be called his brother ever again, only to call himself Odinson a last time just before the very end.   
_I, Loki, Prince of Asgard, Odinson, rightful King of Jotunheim, god of mischief, hereby swear to you my undying fidelity._  
It had been a ruse, of course, to get closer to Thanos for that dagger to find its destination. Loki had gone for the head.   
  
A realization sank into the pit of his stomach, ice-cold, only to heat up rapidly, as if he had swallowed pure seiðr. Those words had been the beginning of traditional Asgardian marriage vows. Had Odin not told them both that they had been born to be Kings, the two of them? Had he not confessed to Loki that fateful night in the trophy room that he had wanted to unite Asgard with Jotunheim through Loki?   
“Father must have wanted to betroth us initially,” Thor murmured like one would speak a silly thought out loud just for oneself. It was such a monumental thing to say, to breathe life into a theory that suddenly made much more sense than any explanation they had been given to this point, that he had to put his cup down on the counter of the gleaming kitchen.   
  
“What was that?”  
He turned around. The Valkyrie and Bruce were enveloped by a hologram of the stars around Asgard; as it appeared, they tried to retrace the path the _Statesman_ had taken before having been blown up by the Power Stone. They stared at him questioningly, and while he frantically searched for either an excuse or the right words to explain this enormous realization, Huginn fluttered up from his resting spot atop the microwave to land next to Thor’s coffee cup. A bowl of walnuts, already significantly emptier, lost another nut that got shattered on the kitchen counter expertly.   
“Is this the truth, Huginn? Friend, might you tell me if I am being a lovesick fool or a blind man healed?”  
The nutshells were rearranged by claws and peak into a set of runes, old Futhark, not the new one that had already gone out of fashion for spells.   
“Right,” Brunnhilde commented, shaking her head slightly, “I always suspected he taught those damn birds of his how to read. What do they say?”  
“Truth,” Thor replied, deeply shaken, and got a caw in return. Apparently, Huginn was done here, because he hopped back to Muninn for continued nut consumption. Their irregular pecking of the black microwave top lid and the yellow bowl were the only noises filling the room.   
  
Brunnhilde fell back on her ass on the carpet, obviously having enough of _royals_ , as she had put it. Bruce narrowed his eyes to assess Thor like they were meeting for the first time. Scratching the short stubble on his chin, he nodded.   
“That makes sense. Loki is the oldest of three brothers originally, right?” Byleistr and Helblindi. Thor wanted to smash their skulls in just for claiming that title over Loki. Brothers.   
“He is. He was. I do not know if they are still alive or who has the throne of Jotunheim currently. Their line of succession is not as fixed as ours as they rely on strength in their leader, which is why Loki was cast out as a mere babe. He would not have survived his first years in the eternal ice of Jotunheim.”   
“And now look at what a pain in the ass he grew to be,” Brunnhilde intercepted, settling back against the sofa. The white leather contrasted her colorful form, her dark hair. Bruce wore purple, standing in front of a large, flat screen which was covered in the nebula that obscured Vanaheim.   
  
There was a moment of silence in which Thor leaned onto the counter, gaze fixed to the floor, feeling like the rug had just been pulled out under him. The question was why on earth Loki had been denied his heritage, his identity when the plan initially had been a different one. Then Bruce nodded, deep in thought.   
“If your folk has conquered Jotunheim, marrying the only heir into the dominating kingdom would have made sense at the time. I don’t know when his next younger brother was born, I forgot their names from the Edda; sorry, it’s been a long time since I read the two versions; but if that new son was normal-sized for a Jotun, Loki would have been useless as a pressure point. Let’s forget the problem of an heir for Asgard here, I’m sure I’m not getting something. Not to tell him of his origin was still a shit thing to do, but I know for a certain that your people have a major problem with racism. Sorry, Thor.”   
  
As Thor curled his fists, staring resolutely down to the carpet while his heart raced in his chest, the Valkyrie came to her feet. The pain they could have been spared, both of them, but especially Loki, the happy hours they could have had, getting to know one another without the lies… Well. Some of them, he thought. Hela would have still been far from their minds.   
Brunnhilde snatched a nut from the bowl that the ravens were still going through in worrying speed to crack it unceremoniously on the counter.   
“Frost giants are neither male nor female, the concept is strange to them. Theoretically, they both can sire and bear offspring; that’s the only way they survived for so long on that brutal death trap of a planet. No beard whatsoever, androgynous, reacts badly to being flirted at; yeah, it makes sense. Uncomfortable question, your Majesty: Has Loki ever bled like our women do?”  
  
For a long moment, he wanted to be swallowed whole by the ground because nothing came to his mind. If Loki had experienced female burdens of existence while being raised and believed himself to be a boy until some ten years ago, he had never shared those struggles with Thor.   
“I… do not know. Mother would have, if at all,” he confessed with rounded shoulders and downcast gaze like an old man. The guilt was eating away at his frayed nerves and there was still smoke over the horizon. They had other, more pressing problems than his and Loki’s shared, fucked-up history at the moment, and yet, unraveling it all seemed as painful and necessary to him as putting pressure on a wound so as to stop it from bleeding out.   
  
Brunnhilde clapped her hands once, almost cheerful.   
“Right. And Queen Frigga got speared by a minotaur or some such monster that Odin kept in the dungeons as a pet. I would have liked to attend her funeral, she always was the only one in that entire palace with her head on straight.” Halting, she let her hands fall to the sides followed by two steps to the floor-to-ceiling window. “Imagine that. Raising two sons, knowing damn well that one of them is neither supposed to live on that artificial summer world, nor in the right skin or possibly the right gender either. And not being able to say or do a damn thing about it.”  
“Father always was a cruel king,” Thor admitted and sighed, exhausted. Norns, he just wanted Loki back to fall asleep spooned against him for a year straight. It had been a long decade in an increasingly difficult century. Things had been falling apart for so long now, he could not pinpoint the day it had started, or the month, or the year. It just became normality, slowly, like the dribble of a steady stream of drops that hollowed out a sturdy stone.   
  
“You know what’s worst about all this horse dung?” Brunnhilde asked, looking at him directly, while Bruce joined them at the window on careful feet. He seemed to still be righting himself on Earth again. The gravity, the air, the people.   
Thor nodded. His words were bitter.   
“Loki would have rather fled at the first opportunity than to be hand-fastened to a boy that boisterous. Somewhere in between losing his identity and our home, he has figured it out. At the hands of Thanos he told me, he did, but I was too scared to follow. Too slow.”  
Silent lightning flashed over the evening sky, night was almost upon them. The patterns painted the clouds violet, there and gone, there and gone. His frantic heart responded in kind, or maybe it was the other way around.   
“That fear kept you alive,” Bruce reassured him kindly with a thin smile. That he had transformed back again at all was a miracle all on its own, one that Thor was endlessly thankful for.   
  
“Loki is out there somewhere as we speak, seeking answers, alone, while Thanos still breathes. That slug has done unspeakable things to him, and yet, before I heard Loki’s neck snap… He told the titan he would never be a god.”  
“And he isn’t,” Brunnhilde replied with conviction, each word as hard as set in stone. “You are. I’m a half-assed warrior born of a stallion that fucked some trees, or so they say. In a good mood, you punch the bastard’s lights out while sleepwalking. On a bad day, he’s no more than a heap of bones and star dust once you’re done with him. That walking grape needs the most powerful stones in the universe from the dawn of time to conquer an empire, Odin did that in his free time before your birth. And you could, too, were you a bit more of an asshole.” Bruce huffed a laugh, leaning against the kitchen counter with his hands on his hips, looking more relaxed than he had in a good long while.   
“What she’s trying to say, I think, is that Thanos will never be a god while you already are, which means that you can kill him. You can end him, Thor, and we’ll be right there with you.”  
  
  
The main problem was that obliterating Thanos’ existence did not reverse what had been done to the universe at large. His plan to save many, many worlds from devastation by reducing the population had been ruined by all animal- and plant life being dusted too, not to mention the chaos that resorted from law and order falling into ruins. After a day and a night of turning Loki’s brooch over in his hands, over and over and over until he could draw and replicate it by heart, Thor went into the forest for solitude. To hold the symbol of Yggdrasil being unmade while he felt like suffocating without Loki by his side seemed to him like a silent accusation. What he had to do was to get a grip on himself, to push away the grief so vast that it was threatening to swallow him whole. Had Loki not sent him Odin’s ravens with a message that carried a hundred layers and more, oh, Thor shied away from the question what would have happened to him. And even with Loki alive, somewhere, impossibly, he was drowning. In fury, in fear, in frustration of having to sit on the eastern edge of a continent of Midgard that happened to speak a language he understood and spoke himself fluently. But the mortals had to heal. Anthony especially.   
  
On a sunny day in late summer, a woman landed on the pavement in front of the Compound, radiating light like a dying star, encased in a colorful, tight suit. She flew and glowed like he did, carrying an air of nonchalance that only the immortal could present justified. Three days after he had desperately tried to pull his own head out of his ass by spending the sunlit hours underneath the comforting rustle of leaves with his feet stretched towards the river, she fell from the sky in the middle of the Avengers’ breakfast.   
She was not, in fact, a goddess or anything in that rank, but half Kree. She bled blue. Thor’s first instinct was to call Stormbreaker and challenge her to go through him first before she even got to touch a single hair on the mortals’ heads. One second, he stood inside the kitchen too big for six people, a talking racoon and a cyborg, next he knew, he was hurtling down onto the ground directly in front of her. If at all, she looked mildly impressed.   
“Ah. Ready to hit before talking, bulky, blond, angry - Asgardian?”  
“Their king,” he snarled, drawing to his full height. Stormbreaker was a comforting weight in his hand. It sung for blood like Mjolnir had, crackled with energy, covered in sparks, and this woman, glowing like the sun, simply pushed it out the way with two fingers.   
  
Her expression never changed.   
“Right. I’m sorry for your loss; I heard. The Kree can choke, my transformation wasn’t voluntary. I’m half human. That enough for trying not to break your nails on me?”  
Slowly, suspicious like Loki had taught him the hard way to be, Thor lowered Stormbreaker all the way. Her confidence reminded him of his younger years; Norns, a mere decade ago he had been the same. Although with the power she wielded, she could probably afford it.   
“If you so much as attempt to harm these mighty heroes-“  
“Yeah, you’ll crush me, got it, thanks, better don’t even start. We can spar another time, I’d be honored to go against a god.”  
Swiping away the azure blood from under her nose and the cut just above her left eyebrow, she shot him a tense smile before she brushed past him without so much as a glance back.   
  
Anthony’s invisible butler accepted her with a polite greeting, no questions, green light instead of red one. She marched straight to the Common Room where everyone was already coming in from the kitchen, nods were exchanged between her and Nebula, after which her gaze fell onto Anthony himself. He fought to maintain an upright stance, though his strength was still fickle at best and fueled only by his rage.   
“Danvers,” he huffed, collapsing into the combined grip of her and Colonel Rhodey. They sat him down on the couch, his legs were shaking, his face pale. “That wasn’t necessary. Nice to see you again, anyway. You alright? How bad is it out there?”  
“Worse than I feared,” she replied, taking a look around. They all appeared about as done with the world at large as Thor himself felt. Tired, haggard, grief-stricken, holding it together by a thread. All in all, they must have made a laughable picture to Danvers, as Anthony had called the half-Kree newcomer. And that just wouldn’t do.   
  
“You know Anthony?” All eyes turned to Thor who now stepped forth, his arms were still firmly crossed and his shoulders pushed back into a royal stance centuries old. Before she could explain, the man in question huffed a tired laugh accompanied by a vague gesture.   
“Funny story, that. She saved my useless ass from slow starvation followed by suffocation out in deep space. Relax, would you? All’s fine. Say hi to Captain Carol Danvers, born somewhere close to my unfortunate start in life, served in the Airforce in the 90s. And now she’s… Yeah, you might just be a weight to throw in our betting pool against the oversized plum.”  
When the pieces clicked into place, Thor rather felt like a complete fool. He wasn’t sorry for being cautious, but a great warrior, no matter the species, was to be treated with more respect than that. He lowered his head.   
“You really are half human, then. I apologize for my earlier rashness, you truly must harbor some considerable powers to survive the Kree’s madness and come out unscathed. Will you aid us in our quest to kill the mad Titan?” The woman nodded, only once, very curtly.   
“That’s why I’m here. I found him. Everyone who is able to and willing to go against him, come with me. Those who need rest – stay. We still need a last line of defense here on Earth.”  
  
And thus they separated into two uneven groups. The first one to step back from the brave ones was Bruce Banner, as one additional transformation would most certainly mean the death of his human form, whereas Nebula offered her blades against her father’s neck before all others. Anthony argued back and forth with the entire team for so long that Thor, for all the admiration he held for him, was dangerously tempted to pull rank and order him to stay put. Stormbreaker was vibrating against his thigh with bloodlust, the very spaces between the stars of Thor’s immortal body were flooded with the urge to kill Thanos yesterday.   
  
In the end, Anthony stayed. He still could scarcely hold himself upright for longer than a few minutes a time. If Thor let the whole room clear out to offer kindness to him without spectators, well, nobody would ever know. After all, a true fighter knew when to pick his battles and how to trust his shield brothers and -sisters.   
“Give him hell from me, buddy,” Anthony told him with a small smile that radiated gratefulness before shrinking back into his shared laboratory space with Bruce at his heels. The two of them, of that Thor was sure, would have each other’s back for a lifetime. It oddly felt like farewell when he turned to walk away.   
  
~*~_~*~  
  
Leaving Midgard was balm to his nerves and a torment at once. As soon as the voices that he constantly had to push to the back of his mind stopped; the pleading, the promises, the prayers of mankind cut in half; breathing suddenly was much easier, only for the numbness of space to quiet his powers like a drug. None of the mighty mortals suspected anything, seeing as this was not Thor’s first spaceflight; no need to claw at his throat for air when he was perfectly safe inside the spacecraft. With Carol Danvers as their boosters, the long and dangerous journey through the vacuum became a flash of what must have been barely an hour. Thor knew not how far the vastness between Midgard and Thanos’ chosen home planet stretched, but the urgency to find his weapon’s victim was intimately familiar to him.   
  
What was left of the Avengers in presence prepared themselves. They sheathed blade after blade after blade, put on suits and helmets to venture into a plentiful garden in a beautiful forest world -   
  
And Loki was already there.   
  
The Infinity Stones lay scattered across the wooden floor of a veranda in front of a wind-swept house, dull like unpolished jewels taken freshly from the earth. Despite two daggers sitting right at his throat, Thanos, beaten and visibly aged, was reaching for the crimson Reality Stone. The noise as his purple skin was slit resembled a pig being slaughtered; a squelch of flesh and sinews tearing. Blood spilled from the wound to splatter onto the floor and drip from his pale worm-like lips. Loki’s face was twisted into a snarl, he wore black over miles of blue skin, marked, lines carved into it to tell of his birthright. There was a second of eye-contact between him and Thor, a shocking, earth-shattering second that distracted Loki enough to loosen his hold. Thanos stretched, impossibly, to close his fingers around Reality, only to have his entire hand chopped off by Nebula’s knifes. This time, Thor went for the head.   
  
It rolled against the near wall like a child’s ball, the impact sounded about as muted as Thanos’ last struggles had been. To his utter astonishment, Thor felt no triumph, not even joy or the old vile knowledge of having been in the right all along. Just another monster he had slain, dead at his feet, soon to be consumed by the maggots. The only feeling crushing his heart was a deep sense of having failed at the most important trial of his entire life. Loki’s throat was a single, large bruise of violet, already growing green at the edges. Anyone with good eyesight would have recognized the individual fingers of Thanos imprinted in Loki’s azure skin. What could have been the smoothest reunion yet was turned so much worse by him bowing, of all things, elegance incarnate, wearing the most bitter of smiles followed by a vague gesture at his throat.   
“Brother,” Thor breathed, hasty to correct himself when Loki glared at him: “Loki. My prince, my all, can you not speak?” The glare didn’t lessen, nor did the distance of three whole steps between them. It might as well have been an abyss, yawning as the Bifrost’s edges after Loki had fallen to his doom.   
  
He sensed rather than he saw the whole team retreat to the entrance of the veranda, giving them a brief moment they desperately needed instead of hastening on, now that the titan was dead. Just like that, almost as quick as the snap. Loki stepped over his corpse, cleaned his daggers on a rag nearby and sheathed them. Thor couldn’t breathe. One wrong word, one wrong move would send the other half of his soul hurrying far from here, judging by how high-strung and nervous at the varied company he appeared. His gaze fell onto the talking raccoon, Rocket, briefly to skitter on to the glowing sun that was Carol Danvers before he focused on Thor once again. While extending his hands in a peaceful gesture, his face underwent a rapid change of emotions that told Thor half of what he wanted to know, and they would find means to better communicate soon enough. This was temporary, after all.   
  
Finally, he kicked himself internally enough to speak; Thor wasn’t muted, just stunned a good ordeal. Loki was so blue, no taller than in his Aesir form, but adorned with ruby-red eyes and long, pearl-colored fingernail. His hands were shaking.   
“May I embrace you?” Astonishment was obvious in his sharp features, chased away by such a deep-rooted hurt in a false neutrality that Thor feared he could never soothe it again. The wounds he had inflicted on Loki’s soul, whatever shape it took today or tomorrow, fared far deeper than those choke bruises that had bereft him of his finest weapons for now: his words. Loki, the Silvertongue, had always been a skilled diplomat and such a magnificent magician that he had outdone all of Asgard’s sorcerers by the age of early puberty. How much his true form, the Jötnar appearance, changed those traits now, Thor could not know, but he vowed then and there that he would, soon. And if he had to turn over every stone in half the universe to find out everything about his beloved’s nature, to better understand him and to help him better understand himself, Norns damned, he would.   
“Loki,” he called again, softly, “I would not hurt you again. Never again, I swear it, not intentionally. I cannot speak for my occasional foolishness, for I fear that you will right me where I am wrong many a time to come, but so the Norns help me, I will protect you where you cannot do it yourself with all the might bestowed in me.” Loki rolled his eyes, but extended his right hand in invitation nevertheless.   
  
Their bodies slotted together perfectly, although Thor was over-mindful not to touch that mangled throat unbidden. Oh, but he would kill the titan over and over again for this grievous wound alone happily, if not for the way Loki melted and exhaled. A hint of voice shone through on the escaping air, though he coughed and hid the convulsing cramps in Thor’s neck. To cough must have caused him agony. Thor tried to be all the gentler for it, if firm, to grasp him and hold him and never let him go ever again until the stars went out and the universe grew dark.   
“You almost had me this time, you minx, however you came back. I shall wish to hear the entire story from your lips as soon as you are recovered, and no sooner,” he mumbled into the shared space of their tiny little world on this sun-flooded veranda. Loki shook with silent laughter, his raven hair smelled of something herbal, like spices mixed with rosewater, and his skin was cool to the touch but not freezing. Another myth, that, then. Jotun did not give frostbite when touched.   
  
Thor was too weak a man not to follow the marks that covered Loki’s forehead, his shoulders and arms. He was wearing black leather with a golden trim that spoke of status, marvelous patterns were stitched into the back and traces of animal hair spoke of an additional fur coat for warmth. Loki must have come directly from Jotunheim, then, bearing the culture he was born in so openly, including four silver rings, otherwise barren of all jewelry. He was dressed to fight and to impress. Softly, Thor pressed his fingertips between Loki’s shoulder blades, too afraid to go any higher.  
“Do I have to call you my king now, too?” he asked teasingly, but Loki shook his head ever so slightly, drawing the rune for royalty, someone highly treasured onto his neck just underneath his shorn hair. “Mhh, a pity. You remain my prince then, for ever and ever. Beautiful.” Loki stiffened whole-bodily, but Thor just held onto him, embraced him a bit tighter and massaged his shoulders until he melted once again. He could only guess at what Loki thought about his natural appearance, the blue of his skin, the markings, the horns, the bloody color of his eyes. They would have that discussion more than once, no doubt, though to start it now with Loki in a massive disadvantage would simply be unfair.   
  
Over his slim shoulder, Thor glimpsed the Avengers watching but not watching, spectating but turning away as if they wanted not to though could not help but witness the reunion of gods. Loki buried a hand underneath Thor’s linen shirt that he wore his armor on just as Natasha threw him a pointed look that spoke of limited time. They still had a universe to set to rights again.   
“Asgard yet lives,” Thor whispered his shallow truth, “Her last survivors, but a few hundred souls battered and scared, hold out in spare rooms on the Avengers’ new facility. Beloved, we must take them somewhere far from Midgard, we cannot live amongst mortals with our lifespan and expect not to run into unsolvable problems. Do you have a planet in mind we could build a home on?” Loki, ever so slowly, withdrew and nodded slightly. Through his black hair, two small horns peaked, they appeared to still be growing as they weren’t quite proportionate yet. His fingers rapidly formed runes before he halted and completely shrunk back into himself. Approaching footsteps made Thor turn.   
  
Of the Avengers, Rhodey was by far one of the most sensible ones, a rational, calm-spoken man despite his occupation as a soldier. The braces that allowed him to walk whirred with every step, but he showed no fear. His face was almost blank, drawn tight by a certain anxiety.   
“We have to go, I’m sorry, I can imagine how relieved you gotta be, but we have to collect those and find a solution to this mess. Tony might just be able to invent a new gauntlet, as the old one’s nowhere to be seen-“ Through all those hasty, apologetic words, Loki gestured wildly, growing increasingly frustrated until Thor held up a hand to stop Rhodey.   
“Broken. Is that what you want to say, Loki? The gauntlet is broken? By the strain, perhaps?” Loki nodded curtly, pursing his lips. How hard this must have been for him, not being able to speak, Thor could only imagine.   
  
Rhodey sighed. His voice sounded strange through the helmet that insured the mortal’s survival on this planet that most likely did not have the exact combination of gases that they needed to breathe.   
“Right. That sucks, but we’ll get around that. Problem is, who wields it then? Look what it did to the bastard, he’s all crumpled and aged like it sucked the lifeforce from him or something.” The question implied did not have to be spoken out loud to be heard. Thor heaved a heavy breath, although he had expected something like this to turn out. He was a god, they were mortal, of course none of them came into question to do the second snap to reverse everything.   
“You want me to undo this slaughter, Colonel?”  
Rhodey looked pained, and they were intensely watched now.   
“That’s right. We think it’s the safest way, you might come out the other side fine or at least alive.”  
  
By now, Loki had attached a single finger to the bridge of his nose, shaking his head with a downright pained expression in clear annoyance. Centuries of living with him told Thor that he was about to rip the confidence of these mortals apart with a few words only, or he would have done that with glee, had he not gone and gotten his throat crushed by the last titan in the universe.   
Loki’s second-best weapon after his magic and his words were his stares. Those green eyes, or in this case, blood red ones, could send a man running in fear for his life without uttering a sound. To give Colonel Rhodey some credit; he did not bolt, though his eyebrows set in this particular fashion a man usually showed before saying something very stupid. Somehow, Loki managed to hold that blithering gaze while mimicking a stomping motion on the Soul Stone, the orange one of the five and possibly the most underrated one. Had Thor not made a heavy step in front of him, Rhodey would have pushed Loki straight off the Stone. Or rather – tried to, at least.   
  
“Wow wow wow, hold on a second, I don’t think that’s a good idea. You wouldn’t want to step on a hand grenade, this thing’s about a million times that, just taking a wild guess. Give or take a few zeros,” the Colonel objected defensively. Loki, of course, had the audacity to actually step on the damn thing. The Infinity Stones each were about as big as a walnut and the Soul Stone in particular remained completely unfaced by being stepped on by a god. Thor had expected nothing else. If destroying the Aether had outsmarted the best and bravest of Asgard so much so that they had sent Sif to bury it in the farthest, most desolate corner of the universe, Loki’s boot would not even put a dent in it. But the message was loud and clear.   
  
Reaching out to soothe him, Thor decided to play translator. Wordless sarcasm into English. Norns…  
“You want to destroy it. Why? It already looks damaged, the Titan’s horrible crime must have … overdone it. Overfilled?” If Loki had ever been proud of him, this was probably the one moment he showed it clear as day because he had no means to hide it without being misunderstood. Thor himself felt kicked in the stomach and thrown under a Bilgesnipe all at once. The idea had come to him while speaking, rage and desperation all packed into a wild shot. Rhodey looked so relieved that the horror when Loki simply blew ice over his hands to pick the Soul Stone up made him look alien. The last draw consisted of him taking Thor’s right arm by the elbow as if for a pleasant stroll down this cultivated garden, leading him down the three stairs of the veranda to the ship. The other Stones he left behind, as uninterested in them now as he had been obsessed with their power years ago.   
  
His fingers were so cold that the single finger he trailed down Thor’s cheek hurt like being sliced with a knife. Not being able to speak rapidly became more of a game to him, his every move elegant as a dance, his smiles turned to smirks and while he completely ignored the Avengers as if he could not see them at all, all his focus lay on Thor solely. That he was holding an Infinity Stone in his palm was just the literal icing on the cake. Visible for all who dared to watch, he spun his emerald seiðr around the glowing gem so slowly that the intention to demonstrate was obvious. The magic that Thor saw through like a waterfall pretended to rip it apart, the shadow of Stormbreaker, unreal, crushed it into a million pieces. It burst. A million, a billion, quadzillions of souls escaped smoke-like, only vaguely shaped like all the uncountable forms that Thanos had turned to dust. And just when the circle of the Avengers around them drew too tight for comfort, Loki let the illusion flicker out of existence.   
  
How oddly quiet it was… The expressions of the mortals spoke of various stages of shock, awe and fear, though no-one dared to move. As if Loki had frozen them in their places, they remained where they stood.   
“All of these varied beings, half of the universe is trapped within this small stone? Are you completely sure?” Thor breathed too quietly for his friends to hear him, his mother-tongue came to him naturally. Loki only lifted a perfect eyebrow and blinked expectantly. It quite came off as a mock disappointment, no need for words. “Of course, forgive me. I trust your judgement,” Thor sought to rectify, closing both his hands around the palm that held the tiny prison. Frost bit his fingers before it melted. If this oddly familiar behavior of Loki’s, though given a new skin, had not thrown him off-center yet, the kiss to his bearded left cheek and the Soul Stone dropped into his steady hands certainly did. Silently, as soft as his footsteps, Loki withdrew before Thor could chase his lips to claim them anew. Snow fell to the ground in between their parted fingertips like the threads of their tangled lives. And within a heartbeat, a rift in reality enveloped him to swallow him whole.   
  
It burned. His very soul got sucked into a sunset world, vaguely aware that his physical body was bowing in agony. In a strange way, it felt peaceful to simply let go and fall. Cracks littered a twilight sky, ready to break apart. In an endless shallow sea were hovering uncountable shades, mere essences, raw mass transformed into energy. This, the very same thing that the Soul Stone fed on, was killing it, Thor’s god-self realized, distant. Floating, trapped in a haze, numb. To be numb meant not to be in pain. In a place like this, the not-air thick with desperation, perhaps the sheer amount of his sorrows was too much to handle even for a part of Infinity. A god’s wrath, he thought. A god’s blood spilled unbidden.   
  
The restless souls looked up, right then, as it all came slamming back into him: Thor’s tears were sparks, the reach of his hands consisted of lightning bolts, jumping quick as if to evade a threat. He was too bright to look at, he _was_ lightning, thunder, rain, and thus night set on an infinite plain.   
  
  
For all intents and purposes, as he was later told by Captain Danvers, he should have been blown into particles as the stone ruptured. Shoot water through a tiny hole and you get a force great enough to cut through metal. Where Thanos’ farm had stood now a crater sat amidst a scorched landscape. Thor walked away heavy, exhausted beyond belief and with a new scar at the center of his palm. They had to carry him back to the spaceship and he remembered absolutely nothing of the journey to Midgard. Natasha told him he had been asleep the entire way, though her stance made him suspect it had not been restful. If Loki had to fight for Thor’s life or not before touchdown he would never know, for he did not plan on asking. There was a perfectly wide bed for him to sink into in the guest chambers at the Avengers facility, and if he pushed his golden crown in the form of a small band on Loki’s lovely head at the last second, just in case the universe decided this was the time he would not wake up again, well, Loki did not have the voice to protest.   
  
He did sleep for a week. For the first night, he more knew than felt Loki to be in his arms, flush against his chest, after that not even a Dark Elf invasion could have roused him.   
  
~*~_~*~  
  
“Look, not to be a complete dickhead here, but why exactly do you have to stir up a political nightmare right now? Can’t that wait, like, a few months? You’d be fine with us here, Reindeer Games. Running water, electricity, best security in the world, internet, food, all the good shit.” A throat clicked while swallowing down annoyance. A huff, the rustling of fabric on the weight of a nation shifting feet. Harsh, whispered words cut through the hum of air conditioning. Not more than a forced whisper. Painful.   
“How many people live in your capitol?” A beat, startled.   
“A little above six million, can’t account for deaths in the battle right now. It’s on my never-ending to do list.”  
“Murder all but five thousand of them randomly,” Loki rasped, swallowed, cleared his throat, coughed. “Take a quarter of those, put them into lifeboats without food supplies. Half them.” Another cough, interrupted.   
“Put that half back because Thor restored the dusted ones to the universe at large.” It sounded more like a question than a fact.   
“Our people were drifting in deep space when the mad Titan bestowed his version of balance on us all.” A beat, two, three. Silence. “And here I thought you were the smart one, Stark.”  
  
Clothes rustled, fabric on skin, something gave a curious sound as it whirred to life.   
“Right. Fuck, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…” A deep sigh cut his apology short. He sounded defeated. “And why Norway?”  
“According to Thor’s all-knowing, _loving_ father, the bones of my people’s ancestors are buried upon that cliff,” Loki sneered, getting harder to understand by the second. His voice was failing him.   
“Now hold up, you’re a deep-frosted smurf with horns. Weren’t your-“  
Tap, tap. Fingernail on gold.   
“I’m the current King of Asgard, for all what that is still worth, and had all-mighty All-bastard Odin betrothed us as initially intended, Thor could have kept his fucking title when he passed out on me and I would be Prince Consort. Now, if you could be so kind, pave our way for a patch of land for a pitiful village in Norway, so we can build what is left of our Empire on that graveyard.” Loki was heaving for breath, spitting venom, out of patience, agony laced his every word. “If you excuse me, Mister Stark, I am in dire need of a cup of ginger tea or seven.”  
  
“… Right. Friday, give them a map of Norway so they can plan, or whatever, and put me on the phone with the fucking Prime Minister Solberg, should she be alive and in office at all. Honestly, I should talk to their King first. Remind me to check on Thor again in three hours, please.”  
“Certainly, Sir.”  
  
~*~_~*~  
  
It was a stormy Thursday when Brunnhilde sat down next to Thor on the salty grass above the roaring sea and asked, apropos of absolutely nothing:  
“So, are you gonna ask him to marry you, or what?”  
Thor, startled out of his half meditative state in a futile attempt to quiet the prayers of the mortals, even if there were less of them now that their world was saved, crooked his head and blinked.   
“Do you think he would respond kindly to a proposal?” He formed it as a genuine question, too tired for sarcasm. Brunnhilde however got more black-humored the worse she felt on principle.   
“As long as you don’t surprise him with it in the middle of the market-place, your balls will be fine. Though I admit that I don’t have the first clue of Jotun customs and he evidently spent his early recovery reconciling with his blood relatives, so the fuck do I know? Try!” She kicked her feet up onto a boulder, lying down with her head on her hands. Autumn storms were hastening the grey clouds towards an unknown destination, waves the size of wooden houses crashed into the cliffside below.   
  
“I don’t know if he would want to go through with a plan put in place by my late father. Hand-fasted or no, I will take no other. He is the other half of my soul, and that is enough for me.” He nodded to himself for good measure, but as ever, Brunnhilfe looked utterly unimpressed with him.   
“And accidentally knock him up one night without having made an honest…” and she waved vaguely into the wind, “Jotun out of him? You have more courage than that, your majesty.” Damn the Norns, she only ever used his title with him when she wasn’t sure of the reception of her words. She sat up so rapidly that he took a moment to crane his neck at her. There was nonchalance written all over her face, darker than his skin by several tones. “Anyway, the reason I disturbed you wasn’t His prickly Highness. The fishers are having a hard time putting up the gate to our city wall.” New Asgard was neither a city nor a town, but a small settlement, lost and alone on their designated cliff. Just as they had wanted, more so, needed it.   
  
Thor gave another nod, this time in thanks, and untangles his legs from the cross-legged seat that Bruce had taught him. Somewhere between the longhouse that functioned as a palace and a community hall both and the scattered little houses, stone propping up wooden logs, roofs made of reed and bark, a flash of blue caught his eyes. Blue and green and gold, skin and magic and jewelry. He was up on his feet and walking before he even realized that he hadn’t finished that conversation with Brunnhilde, which was just too rude for Frigga’s well-mannered son. No, the other one.   
“Initially I hoped to propose once Huginn and Munnin return with news of our new home planet,” he cautioned, standing still and only half-way turned towards the sea. The salt in the air made it easier to breathe. “But if the past decade has taught me one thing, then not to take Loki for granted.” Now he faced Brunnhilde fully once more who then clambered up to her feet too. Hands propped up on her hips, a nod followed, satisfied. “I will talk to him about it, and while he would make me the happiest man in the universe, as long as he is with me, I will be fine either way.”  
“As fine as any of us will ever be again,” she added, and if that wasn’t their truth summed up... Thor inclined his head in respect, standing straight and wishing desperately that his legs weren’t quite so heavy.   
“Thank you, Brunnhilde, for everything. You would have liked the Warriors Three very much, of that I am sure, and you will get along with the Lady Sif like a house on fire, once we find her. Or she finds us. Wherever we might be that joyous day.”  
  
Grief settled back into his bones as he turned to walk away, glad at her honest smile, and he wore it like his cloak. Wrapped around him, thick and soaked in red, forever one of the only things that still tethered him to Asgard.   
  
He helped the fishermen put up that gate, closed it with his own hands even. Now the only open side of the village faced the roaring sea where the winds whipped up the waves as if in invitation, a warning, a playful threat to dare and take flight. Seldom had Thor missed Mjolnir more, and he took that pain too, accepted it even though he knew now that this particular loss had been necessary for him to grow beyond the bounds of his youth.  
Stormbreaker was still where he had left it: Leaning against the wall of their bedroom, no two arms’ length away from Loki on his desk.  
“The seeds for next year have been delivered and stored away,” he greeted Thor without looking up, bowed over finances and a long letter. His raven hair was repeatedly falling over his shoulders and every time he shucked it back again it was to no avail, so an annoyed flick of his wrist bound it into a neat plaid, held together by a deep green band at the bottom. It had the colour of his eyes when he focused on Thor in the doorway, one eyebrow perfectly arched. “I imagine you had better things to do than oversee so trivial a delivery, which is why I took that task from your busy hands. You’re welcome.”  
  
Despite the fact that his voice had not yet regained all its velvety glory, as well as that his throat was yet marred black and purple, worse in this pale state than on the blue hue, Loki had obviously lost none of his ability to weave offense into false submissiveness. What it said about Thor that he adored him all the more for it was a question best left for later contemplation in quiet.  
“Thank you,” he said, breathlessly distracted. “Please call me away from anything at all should you need me, although in this case I am quite sure you had it handled.” To be an ass, and just because he could, he sank on one knee beside Loki to press a kiss to his temple. In his chest beat the drums of a celebration over the small smile that curved Loki’s silver lips. “In case you thought I was idle, indeed I was not, as the Valkyrie had some words of wisdom for me.”  
“Oh Norns,” Loki muttered without any heat, questioning. There was light to his eyes which had been missing for a decade at least, up until a few days ago. It was sinking in slowly, for both of them, that this was more of a home than the Avengers’ residence ever would be and less of one than Asgard had been, and that this was enough for now.  
  
“Now, please do not think this is coming from her, as I assure you this has been burning on my heart for months, if not several decades, which, admittedly, makes me more fool than king. And fool I am, my prince, a confessed fool for you.”  
“You have such a way with words,” Loki shot back without pause, though now both his eyebrows had risen quite a good deal, and contrary to his sarcasm, there was a blush high on his pronounced cheekbones. Thor winced. He was wringing his hands, to stop that just made the urge to draw Loki into his arms all the stronger. A few years ago he would have just asked, or demanded, even, for his marriage proposal to be accepted.  
“I know nothing of your people’s customs of vows, which is as much my fault as Asgard’s at large, I suppose-“  
“Odin’s fault,” Loki interrupted with a solemn stare, his face impassive. “And my people are the Aesir.” It hurt as it thrilled him to hear it admitted, free of shame as much as Loki was still in denial. Helpless to respond any other way Thor took his slender hands into his own, tender as he was with nothing and nobody else. Loki’s skin tone froze under his gaze, so he followed it with the sweep of a thumb, smiling.  
“They are, my love, and nothing could delight me more, nothing ignites me as watching you take over half my duties and revel in them. But that is not all there is to you, and I love you all the more for it. Your soul has different shapes. I would make right by them.”  
  
Loki was silent then for a long while, his gaze averted downwards, fixed on some spot in the wooden floor as the ice took over every inch of his body. Still Thor held onto his hands. His eyes were of a chilling crimson when he spoke.  
“Like this too? The dwarven giant, the monstrous child? Unwanted oldest prince of another realm?”  
Not heeding his bleeding heart at all, to tend to it another time, Thor kissed Loki’s fingers which were adorned with several silver rings.  
“All the more for it.” Loki raised his chin as if in defiance. A nonchalant gesture towards the desk closed and cleaned up all books and papers, the green glow wrapped around his seafoam palm like a lover’s embrace. If there was a hint of a disbelieving smile nipping at the edges of his lips, he hid it well.  
“Ask, then. Ask as you are, not as you would have in another world.”  
  
Like the mortals, the Aesir normally proposed down on one knee, so Thor drew him up to his feet without letting go off his hands. Candles illuminated the bedchamber and made the shadows dance on the walls, quiet as the belly of a ship it gave the occasional groan, sturdy, protecting, something solid to build upon. Loki’s eyes were shining like polished rubies. His stance told tales of futures past, a story of a would-be-king, of a prince, lost and found, unwanted and so very loved.  
“You have had my heart from a young age when I was reckless and boastful, you righted me, my one true north when I drifted off my intended course. I could not live without you if I tried, so I will stay by your side if you’ll have me, find you again and again, in front of and behind the gates of Valhalla.” He had to draw for breath right then because of how close they had come to that very spot, to losing one another to the other world, enticing as its promises of mead and glory may be. Loki’s gaze was wide, a small smirk to his mouth. “Your Royal Highness Prince Loki Laufeyson, Odinson, my eternity is yours to do with as you please. Will you marry me?”  
  
And if he had thought before that he was nervous, the quivering to his hands was a tame small thing in comparison to the quake of his heart. Loki kissed him, and kiss him he did, all sweet softness and sharp stinging cold.  
“Yes. I will, you big oaf.” A whisper passed between them as breath, as air. “Take me, then, and take me entirely,” he answered low with the scratch still clinging to his voice, “Do not let go of me, for I will hold you close until the Norns tear you from me in person. My eternity has been yours to do with as you please for longer than I care to admit.”  
  
Then there was laughter, an overjoyed breathless bark followed by a shriek when Thor lifted Loki into his arms and spun him around as they drowned in another kiss. Somehow, entirely without his intention, they ended up on the bed, Loki beneath him, his black braid lay messy on the furs.  
“If I call you my Queen in public…” Thor started, but promptly shut up when his beloved narrowed his eyes.  
“You will wait a very long time for any children to run around the palace. Be it here or on a faraway planet.”  
“Loki,” he groaned, heat and triumph and joy and gratefulness all blending into a heady mix that left him little choice but to sweep back in for a kiss bordering on brutal. When he tried to pull back, to reign himself in, Loki clung to him with his nails leaving impressions in Thor’s back through the tunic.  
“Have me, my king, or else I’ll be forced to seek another beast to ride.”  
Underneath the growl that ripped itself from his breast there was a roaring bilgesnipe ready to break out. It took all but two seconds for passion to win over caution. Thor had Loki bare in record time. He was hard and leaking, wet and shining underneath in slim folds where the sack would have been, a beautiful azure contrast on the dark brown bear skins. Thor unclasped his own tunic almost as an afterthought, his heart was pounding, as if this were their first time all over again. Eons ago he would have gawked.  
  
“You will push me away when I hurt you, and as much as I love to make you scream, you _won’t_ ruin your voice again.” In spite that Loki rolled his eyes at him, head dropping back onto the bed when Thor took his length in hand, his vaguely gesturing hand was shaking in anticipation, or nerves, or both.  
“Only if you try and silence me.” Two fingers inside of him did the exact opposite of _silencing_ him. He threw an arm over his face and shuddered, a quake that started in his very core and spread to his thighs and calves until he had Thor in a vice-grip of mile-long legs. “Norns above, if you take your sweet time with me now-“  
“I wasn’t particularly planning on it,” Thor replied smirking to then promptly go down on him with practiced ease. He swallowed Loki’s purple length half to work his way further as slowly as his throat allowed, all the while pumping two fingers in and out of him, mindful not to scratch the insides. And that got the lithe Jotun prince to bow off the bed.  
  
“Thor!” he yelled, drew in a breath, coughed, which made Thor slow down to nothing at all and pop off. As it turned out, Jötnar could growl as well just fine. If their throat wasn’t still healing from a death grip.  
“Quiet, dear heart, or the healers will question why their prince is so scarce in his curses again.”  
“Love of my life proposed,” Loki panted, “got thrown on the bed, demanded to be fucked to the gates of Valhalla. My sincere apologies, lords and ladies.” Thor buried his rumbling laughter in Loki’s weeping folds, licking and nipping to his heart’s content, memorizing which spots made the glorious legs around his torso tighten just that bit more. But then again, he himself was painfully hard as rock and pulsing, the time for teasing and to reduce Loki to a begging gasping mess with patience would come. Possibly before their wedding night.  
  
“We will have to wait with the handfasting ceremony, all the big celebrations that you deserve, until you are fully healed.” To hide his smile even when on his knees was impossible, utterly unthinkable. He sucked Loki’s length down again once, twice, until his poor darling heart had to bite his own arm not to scream, or come, or possibly both. Letting go of Loki’s hips, Thor crawled over him, less a threat than a promise. “All of our people will hear you, and me, admittedly, once I am yours and you are mine.”  
His eyes turned dark then, a fire glowing within like hot coal. Both his arms were slung around Thor’s broad shoulders, fingers resting atop old and new scars which Loki traced like a map of constellations.  
“Why wait?” And he raised his long legs then to link his ankles across Thor’s bottom. Even while he caught the tip of Thor’s throbbing length in his folds, high-strung with need, he was beauty and grace incarnate. A high flush made his cheeks light up in amethyst, the gods’ groans and keens mingled to form a symphony of wanton abandon. It was so terribly easy this way to slide all the way into Loki, no extra oil and little preparation needed, yet there was nothing womanly about him right now. That might change tomorrow, or the day after, and back again.  
  
Forehead to forehead they got used to the onslaught of sensation, lost to the tides of emotion. With their eyes closed Loki exhaled.  
“Take me, then, and take me entirely.”  
It should not have made Thor forget all restraint. It did.  
  
The headboard gave grating sounds of protest when he braced himself against it, but it held. Loki’s whimpers and punched-out breaths were music to his ears, a fire burned in his loins to lick ever higher until it reached his pumping heart. Sweat was dripping down his neck. Their union was messy and anything but sweet, the smell of sex heavy in the air. His pale hips slapped Loki’s azure hue purple where it hit, pearl-coloured semen and the clear slick were smeared to cling and drip onto the furs of their bed. Distantly, numbed by the building pleasure, a single thought formed to pierce through the haze: that Thor was the luckiest man in the galaxy, perhaps the universe, even though this was only the start. The beginning of something fateful, of something a long time coming, proven by the tender way their hands intertwined on the feather cushion just before Loki arched right into him and swallowed his scream. It was hard to say if he was in pain or lost in extasy, so Thor slowed, just to get kicked into the butt immediately.  
“Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t you dare stop now, Thor, Thor!” As in prayer his name fell from Loki’s lips until the garbled words became a high keening sound when Thor complied. He was half out of his mind with want, sparks of pride and joy made him grip Loki’s slim hips instead of the abused headboard.  
“If you can sit down afterwards, I shall be offended and try again,” he growled right into a ghost-like kiss which turned desperate within a heartbeat. Loki clung to him like he was afraid of falling off the Bifrost all over again, up until the moment of Thor crashing over the edge of the cliff. He could physically feel himself empty his seed into Loki, and the thought alone, what risk they were taking, what _chance_ , made him twitch in aftershocks.  
  
“You’re mine,” Loki declared, voice hard, into the space between his neck and his shoulder, still connected to him with every inch of cool skin. “Forever and always, no running away or being unbearably stupid anymore. On either side. Do you hear me, oh Thor? Mighty Thor, will you stay?”  
“Always,” he promised Loki’s collarbone which he received a well-deserved kick to the thigh for. Overflowing with love to the point of being afraid to spill too much of it, he looked up. “Always.”  
There was a rosy heat flooding into delicate features, greenery took over the lava irises as Loki, pacified, settled. When Thor pulled out with a huff, he stretched like a great cat, never letting go of him.  
“From the bottom of my questionable soul good luck to Your Majesty for _that_ round of explanations to the mortals. If you get any idea about washing up before I fall asleep, I’ll have to chain you to this bed.”  
“Another time perhaps, dear one, and you can have your way with me then.”  
For a split second it seemed like Loki’s inquisitive eyebrow promised the second, slower crescendo of passion without any rest at all, though apparently he memorized this particular answer for later.  
“Duly noted.” A deep kiss sealed their night. They could not have emerged if they tried, their legs were loosely entangled. As soon as Thor settled down behind Loki to take him into his arms, to draw the blankets over them against the cold autumn air, he knew what one of these days he wanted to do next to his promised. With the warmth between their heated naked bodies, the graceful shape of Loki in all his glory, pliant, his head cushioned on Thor’s bicep and his left arm slung over Thor’s where it rested over his waist, there was nothing to remind them of past tragedies.  
  
Maybe, he hoped while drifting off into a dreamland equally as blissful as reality, they had paid their respective price now. Sorrow and near death and separation. Perhaps, so the Norns were merciful this once, this would last. In this world and the next.


End file.
